We are planning to make our own website
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My friend and me, two 23 year olds, are planning to make a website(as our business). I would be glad if anyone can guide us about technical(hardware related), managerial and financial problems we will face.
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i assume that means "lots of luck" right? ;P
----------------------------------------------------------- "When I first saw it, I just thought that you really, really enjoyed programming in java." - Leslie Sanford
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My friend and me, two 23 year olds, are planning to make a website(as our business). I would be glad if anyone can guide us about technical(hardware related), managerial and financial problems we will face.
d@nish wrote:
My friend and me
My friend and I right?
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i assume that means "lots of luck" right? ;P
----------------------------------------------------------- "When I first saw it, I just thought that you really, really enjoyed programming in java." - Leslie Sanford
jgasm wrote:
i assume that means "lots of luck"
That's a fair assumption :) I figured lol could mean "loads of learning" :rolleyes:
"The clue train passed his station without stopping." - John Simmons / outlaw programmer "Real programmers just throw a bunch of 1s and 0s at the computer to see what sticks" - Pete O'Hanlon "Not only do you continue to babble nonsense, you can't even correctly remember the nonsense you babbled just minutes ago." - Rob Graham
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d@nish wrote:
My friend and me
My friend and I right?
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Problem 1: We need to hire/find a technical writer.
:laugh:
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My friend and me, two 23 year olds, are planning to make a website(as our business). I would be glad if anyone can guide us about technical(hardware related), managerial and financial problems we will face.
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The very first thing you should do is find the nearest SCORE chapter and schedule a meeting. It is a free service and they will get you started down the proper path.
Apparently the closest one to him is in Anchorage, Alaska. #1—Anchorage SCORE (6178.6mi) US Small Business Administration 510 L Street, Suite 310 Anchorage, AK 99501-1952 PHONE: (907) 271-4022 FAX: (907) 271-4545 Email: score558@gci.net
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My friend and me, two 23 year olds, are planning to make a website(as our business). I would be glad if anyone can guide us about technical(hardware related), managerial and financial problems we will face.
You and your friend should get full-time jobs and then outsource all of the coding work to India :p On a serious note, the website is not as important as the marketing. How will you let your customers know you have product and how will your product or service be better than existing products? Second you have to build the business system in place to handle customer orders, customer payments, shipping, returns, and inventory management. Lastly build the website around the business model you built above. Also, as you are college age and drinking age, go to a lot of clubs and bars where 30 to 40 somethings go and talk loudly to your friend in a descriptive manner about your idea without giving away the juice. It will generate buzz, give an opportunity to hand out business cards, and potentially lead to the VC call.
Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
Most of this sig is for Google, not ego. -
Apparently the closest one to him is in Anchorage, Alaska. #1—Anchorage SCORE (6178.6mi) US Small Business Administration 510 L Street, Suite 310 Anchorage, AK 99501-1952 PHONE: (907) 271-4022 FAX: (907) 271-4545 Email: score558@gci.net
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My friend and me, two 23 year olds, are planning to make a website(as our business). I would be glad if anyone can guide us about technical(hardware related), managerial and financial problems we will face.
Are you planning to design the website for yourself, or a client? What expertise do you offer? I've heard the cheapest way is LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). Your mileage may vary, depending on your experience with any of those. Check out the ISP costs for hosting a business site. ie bandwith. Is storage necessary? Do they provide a domain name? Security can be difficult. If money changes hands, do research on legal commitments (encryption, storage of CC#)
Cheetah. Ferret. Gonads. What more can I say? - Pete O'Hanlon
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You and your friend should get full-time jobs and then outsource all of the coding work to India :p On a serious note, the website is not as important as the marketing. How will you let your customers know you have product and how will your product or service be better than existing products? Second you have to build the business system in place to handle customer orders, customer payments, shipping, returns, and inventory management. Lastly build the website around the business model you built above. Also, as you are college age and drinking age, go to a lot of clubs and bars where 30 to 40 somethings go and talk loudly to your friend in a descriptive manner about your idea without giving away the juice. It will generate buzz, give an opportunity to hand out business cards, and potentially lead to the VC call.
Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
Most of this sig is for Google, not ego.Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
You and your friend should get full-time jobs and then outsource all of the coding work to India
I have a full time job for past 2.5 years. He had a job for 2 yrs and then he left it to do masters in business administration. And we are Indians. Thanks for your guidance. Will give this a thought. Be ready for another question from me about this.
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Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:
You and your friend should get full-time jobs and then outsource all of the coding work to India
I have a full time job for past 2.5 years. He had a job for 2 yrs and then he left it to do masters in business administration. And we are Indians. Thanks for your guidance. Will give this a thought. Be ready for another question from me about this.
Then outsource to China :p
Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
Most of this sig is for Google, not ego. -
Problem 1: We need to hire/find a technical writer.
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My friend and me, two 23 year olds, are planning to make a website(as our business). I would be glad if anyone can guide us about technical(hardware related), managerial and financial problems we will face.
It depends on what your web site will offer and the traffic it will generate. To start, you can host it on any computer with a 24/7 broad band connection. You can use a dynamic DNS service (I use www.changeip.com[^]) to route the traffic to your server even if it does not have a fixed IP. The LAMP approach is excellent if you are going to build a new box to act as the web server, but with some extra effort you can use any existing windows box. I host eight sites on an old Win03 box, but they are vanity or development sites that generate low traffic. You should check out WordPress, Joolma, etc. These are focused on blogging, but can also be used to build sophisticated content managed web sites with a minimum of direct coding. If you are doing a retail site, check out the open source shopping carts. These will include CC processing, etc. Or check out using Amazon's store fronts. When your web site becomes a success and the demands become higher in terms of up time / security / hits / etc, it will be time to look into a hosted environment. Good Luck!
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Then outsource to China :p
Need software developed? Offering C# development all over the United States, ERL GLOBAL, Inc is the only call you will have to make.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -- Ernest Hemingway
Most of this sig is for Google, not ego.What if his partner is Chinese,
Proud to be a CPHog user
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My friend and me, two 23 year olds, are planning to make a website(as our business). I would be glad if anyone can guide us about technical(hardware related), managerial and financial problems we will face.
As I understand the website will be your business? - i.e. you will be offering a web service? I can't help much, but here are a few things I can think of: (1) Read EVERYTHING you can find about business from developers that turned themselves into their own company or micro-companies. (You can stop reading if, from the first paragraph you can determine the success of the company.) There are some articles here on codeproject, and some blogs out there (2) Grow slowly. This is probably a given for a two-person startup, but yeah, when your user base hundredfolds overnight, you want to have the ugly bugs be fixed already. (3) Get some big questions out of the way between the two of you. Like: If someone offers you two a milion for the site, will you sell? Or do you want to keep "creative control"? Just so that you two start with the same plans for the future. Not as a promise that you actually WILL decide this way when "it" happens, just that the questions - and answers - have been on the table, and you know how each of you thinks about that. (4) technically, prepare for the big day. One mention on kottke (or whatever) could melt your servers. The point is not just to make sure the implementation scales well, but also how your ISP reacts when it fails: Will it display a simple "technical mumbo-jumbo" page? (EPIC FAIL) A "user has exceeded bandwidth"? (FAIL) Will they happily chug along but charge you through the nose for extra bandwidth? (by then, could be peanuts or ruin). (This is unless you know exactly what you are doing, and get venture capital into it that requires you to grow fast. But judging by your question, you don't ;)) This is all to much focused on the "big day" - I guess there's much more to say about the day-to-day grind in the trenches, and running a business at all. I wanted to give you at least some advise, though :)